The Flying Monkey and The Compass

As my assitant and I were out in the great wilderness this weekend searching for the legendary flying monkey which only comes out at night, we somehow got lost and did know how to get out the lushes forest we were in (we were not really lost. we just wanted to construct a compass.) Luckily with my knowledge of physics and my assitants abundance in supplies we were able to construct a compass. I knew that if I had a pretty strong permanent magnet and some kind of small pin of iron I could align the domains in the pin and have the pin become magnetized.

Step 1: I take apart my assitant's high quality bose headphones and remove its permanent magnet which has the magnetic force equivalent to say a bar magnet.

Step 2: I removed the sewing needle from the sweater that my assitant was making for her grandmother and stroke it in one direction along the permanent magnet. This step aligned the domains within the the needle, making the needle now magnetized.

Step 3: Since it had just rained there were a few puddles around. I found a leaf and stuck the needle through it so the needle would float in the puddle. The needle roamed around for a little while until it pointed in one direction.

This is where it gets tricky. We did not know whether we stroked the needle on the north or south pole of the permanent magnet so we still not know what direction we were facing. Luckily we were not actually lost so we just packed up our stuff and went home.